Get your app in shape

Presentation created for Silicon Valley Mobile Dev & Design Meetup.

This talk is about overcoming certain challenges with the Groupon Android app, highlighting specific tools and patterns he’s found which we hope are applicable to your teams as well.

Transcript

2. GET YOUR A** IN SHAPE CARLOS SESSA
3. GET YOUR APP IN SHAPE CARLOS SESSA
4. CARLOS SESSA Working on mobile for 5+ years Author of 50 Android Hacks Android Engineering Manager Not in shape
5. ARGENTINA
6. ARGENTINA
7. GROUPON’S ANDROID APP
8. 45 MILLION DOWNLOADS
9. 45 MILLION DOWNLOADS 17+ MILLION ACTIVE USERS
10. 17+ MILLION ACTIVE USERS 45 MILLION DOWNLOADS
11. THE TALK • Understanding your app • Improving startup performance
12. THE CONVERSION FUNNEL Conversion funnel is a technical term used in e-commerce operations to describe the track a consumer takes through an Internet advertising or search system, navigating an e-commerce website and finally converting to a sale. The metaphor of a funnel is used to describe the decrease in numbers that occurs at each step of the process. “ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conversion_funnel
13. GROUPON’S FUNNEL Launch Splash Carousel Deal Details Checkout Thank You
15. WHY MEASURE? Prioritize work Validate hypotheses Understand users
16. STARTUP PERFORMANCE
17. After measuring all page views, we noticed a big drop from Splash to Carousel.
18. After measuring all page views, we noticed a big drop from Splash to Carousel.
19. HYPOTHESES App is slow. User leaves before Carousel. 1 App is crashing on certain devices. 2
20. HYPOTHESES No sign of crashes in crash reporting tool. App is slow is our best explanation. =
21. APP IS SLOW
22. APP IS SLOW ASSEMBLE YOUR TEAM
23. GOALS • Define what app startup is • Create graph to track progress • Understand what is taking time • …
24. MAKE IT FASTER
25. APP STARTUP DEFINED AS 1. Clicking on the app icon 2. Reach the Carousel with all images shown
26. APP STARTUP DEFINED AS
27. IMPLEMENTATION • Application and activities are measured separate • Added load callback to Picasso to detect when all visible images are loaded • Graphs for production data • Graphs for a small set of devices
28. 4.6 5.3 5.9 6.5 Feb 10 Feb 25 Mar 12 Mar 27 Apr 11 Apr 26 May 11 May 26 Jun 10 Jun 25 15.1 15.2 15.3 15.4 APP STARTUP TIME
29. OTHER IMPROVEMENTS
30. ROBOGUICE • Upgraded to RG 3.x (annotation processing) • Replaced RG’s • @InjectView => Butterknife • @InjectResource => VitaminSaber • @InjectExtra => Dart • Pruned RG (v 4.x) • Use LazyInject
31. REQUEST EXACT IMAGES Picasso has 2 caches • Disk cache for http • Memory cache for transformed images If your endpoint doesn’t offer custom size • Waste of memory • Performance hit of transformations
32. DISABLE FEATURE FOR LOW END • Use Facebook’s Device Year Class • Bitmap 565 for devices older than 2012.
33. ORMLITE GRADLE PLUGIN • Ormlite uses a command line tool to build a config file. • Modifying the file was painful. • Open Source https://github.com/stephanenicolas/ormlite-android-gradle-plugin
34. REMOVE THE SPLASH • Make Splash the background of Carousel • Based on Cyril Mottier’s article: Android App Launching Made Gorgeous http://cyrilmottier.com/2013/01/23/android-app-launching-made-gorgeous/
35. “ANDROID APP LAUNCHING MADE GORGEOUS” by CYRIL MOTTIER
36. “ANDROID APP LAUNCHING MADE GORGEOUS” by CYRIL MOTTIER
37. DB REARCHITECTURE • Smaller deal objects for the carousel • Reduced the length of relations solving the m+1 queries
38. SHRINK RESOURCES android { ... buildTypes { debug { shrinkResources true ... } } } $ ./gradlew clean assembleDebug --info | grep "Skipped unused resource"
39. RUN LINT • UnusedResources • UnusedIds • … • Basically run every Unused*
40. 2.5MB REDUCTION IN APK SIZE
41. CONCLUSION
42. CONCLUSION Create hypotheses and test 1 Reduce dependencies and code 2 Profit! 3
43. CARLOS SESSA csessa@groupon.com THANK YOU! QUESTIONS? @macarse